1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to sports equipment and accessories for target shooters, marksman, archers and the like, and relates more particularly to a stand for supporting sport weapons such as bows, firearms and the like.
2. Background Art
Hunters, marksmen and archers who use bows and firearms often spend many hours practicing their sport on public or private practice ranges. Sometimes, these ranges are located in remote areas which would require one to hand-carry his or her equipment to the range. Most often, the weapons appearing on the range will have a wide variety of different physical dimensions and configurations. On the range, it is common that individuals will pair up and practice together. While practicing, it is often necessary to temporarily place the weapon down when not in use. In such case, if the weapon is not properly secured, it could be damaged, misaligned, misadjusted or subjected to excessive wear.
The need therefore arises for a device which can hold a sport weapon, while not in use, in such a manner as not to cause damage, misalignment, misadjustment or excessive wear to the weapon. In addition, this device should be adjustable to accommodate weapons of a variety of different dimensions and configurations. Further, the device should be able to hold two weapons to accommodate the common situation where two individuals are practicing together, or the case where one individual may bring two weapons onto the range. The device should be lightweight and portable for easy transportability to remote practice ranges. Further, the device should offer ergonomic features which facilitate access to the weapon and otherwise make the device convenient to use on the range.
Attempts have been made to fulfill some of the above-mentioned requirements, but none has succeeded. For example, a bow stand is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,085,319 to Wellman et al. This stand suffers from a substantial drawback in that the bars employed for supporting the bow are fixed. Such a device is not optimum for supporting a wide variety of bow configurations across its fixed bars. In addition, the stand does not appear to be portable, lightweight, or easily transportable. Moreover, the support bars consist merely of square pieces of wood, the edges of which can cause unnecessary wear on the bow. Further, the device suffers from the lack of ergonomic features, most notably, the vertical arrow compartments require the user to reach over the support bars.
Another example is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 4,474,296 to Hartman. There, a portable archery stand has limited capacity in that it accommodates only a single bow. In addition, its support structure is limited in its adjustability to accommodate different bow configurations. Moreover, the bow is supported in a vertical position by two rigid bifurcated brackets which may cause unnecessary wear on the bow. Further, the stand in Hartman does not appear to be suitable other types of sport weapons, such as firearms.